find their way out through a duct which opens at one of the angles of the mouth. It is a pleasing sight, and one by no means uncommon, to see five, ten, or twenty young, of various sizes, but perfect in form, expelled from the duct, and dispersed around, where they soon attach themselves, and constitute a colony around their parent.

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While in the body of their mother, they occasionally find their way into the tentacles, as these organs are hollow, and communicate with the interseptal chambers. Sir John Dalyell, who had paid great attention to these animals, thought that this was their normal position. "The embryos," he says, appear first in the tentacula, from whence they can be withdrawn and transmitted to others by the parent, and are at last produced by the mouth, In the course of six years a specimen preserved by the author produced above two hundred and seventy-six young; some pale and like mere specks, with only eight tentacula; others florid, and with twenty. They are frequently disgorged along with the half-digested food, thirty-eight appearing thus at a single litter. An embryo extracted artificially from the amputated tip of a tentaculum began to breed in fourteen months, and survived nearly five years. Monstrosities by excess are not uncommon among the young; one produced naturally consisting of two perfect bodies; and their parts, sustained by a single base, exhibited embryos in the tentacula at ten months, bred in twelve, and lived above five years. While one body was gorged with food, the other continued ravenous.'

It is interesting to see the Actinia fed; and as they are very voracious, they are rarely unwilling to gratify their benefactors with a display of their swallowing powers. Their natural prey consists of the smaller Mollusca, Annelida, Star-fishes, Crustacea, and, in short, of any animals *Rer. Br. Assoc. 1834; and Edin. New Phil. Journ. xvii.

A STOMACH IN TWO STORIES.

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which they are able to seize and to retain. The tentacles have the same prehensile power as those of the Hydra,—a power which depends on the presence of projectile barbed weapons, ordinarily coiled in elastic cells. These organs are found in inconceivable multitudes imbedded in the tissues of the tentacles, of the lips, of the stomach, of the frilled ovarian bands, and especially, in some species, in long threads which are protruded from pores in the integument of the body.

In captivity the process of taking food may be witnessed by presenting to the Sea-Anemone any small shell-fish, or an atom of raw meat. When a tentacle comes into contact with it, it contracts forcibly, and the prey is thus dragged upon the oral disk, the surrounding tentacles arching over it. The lips instantly begin to protrude, stretching out towards the morsel, which they presently embrace, and gradually inclose, extending their volume, until they close. over it, sucking it in as it were, and forcing it to disappear within the body. Digestion now takes place; and in the course of the next twenty-four hours the remains, such as the shell of a mollusk, or the hard parts of a little crab, are disgorged through the mouth, enveloped in a tenacious, slimy mucus.

Though commonly the prey of the Actinia is small, it is not always so; the voracious creature occasionally mastering and swallowing a victim even much larger than itself; strange as such a proposition may sound. Dr. Johnston has recorded from his own experience an example of this: "I had once brought me," he observes, "a specimen of Actinia crassicornis, that might have been originally two inches in diameter, and that had somehow contrived to swallow a valve of the great scallop (Pecten maximus), of the size of an ordinary saucer. The shell, fixed within the stomach, was so placed as to divide it completely into two halves, so

that the body, stretched tensely over, had become thin and flattened like a pancake. All communication between the inferior portion of the stomach and the mouth was of course prevented, yet, instead of emaciating and dying of an atrophy, the animal had availed itself of what undoubtedly had been a very untoward accident, to increase its enjoyments and its chance of double fare. A new mouth, furnished with two rows of numerous tentacula, was opened up on what had been the base, and led to the under stomach the individual had, indeed, become a sort of Siamese twin, but with greater intimacy and extent in its unions!"*

What may be the duration of life in these low forms of existence, we know not, but recorded facts seem to warrant the belief that it is considerable. Sir John Dalyell stated, in 1845, that one was then in vigorous health which had lived in his possession for a period of seventeen years. They appear subject to few vicissitudes, and to enjoy a more than usual immunity from the attacks of other animals.

The reproductive energy is no less vigorous in these animals than in the Hydra; and similar experiments to those already described have been instituted on these with similar results. They have been variously maimed and cut into pieces, the fragments reproducing the parts lacking, and rapidly assuming a complete and normal condition.

We have at least fifty species of Sea-Anemones, including the allied genera, on the British coasts; and it is probable that they are even much more numerous than this, as new discoveries are constantly rewarding the close examination of any particular locality. Among them are two or three representatives of a form which is far more abundant in the tropical seas, where they have acquired renown above their fellows as "master-builders." The

* Brit. Zoophytes, i. 235.

structures of the Coral-worms very far excel the mightiest edifices of man; what was the impious project of Babel, what are the Pyramids of Egypt, compared with the coral reef of Australia, a barrier which extends almost without an interruption for a thousand miles?

The notion that the coral-rock was commenced in the fathomless depths of the ocean, and gradually reared to the surface, has been exploded by the discovery of Darwin that the Coral-polypes cannot exist at a greater depth than some twenty or thirty fathoms. Our limited space will not permit us to do more than allude to his beautiful and ingenious theory by which all the phenomena of coral-formations are explained. It seems certain that every such structure must have been commenced on the inorganic rock; and the slow subsidence of these in many instances has produced the various forms of atolls, or ring-islets inclosing lagoons, of barriers, and of fringing reefs.

Most intelligent persons are acquainted with the more common forms of Madrepores or Corals. Whether existing in massive, ramified, or laminated structures, they commonly consist of a light, porous stone, studded with shallow pits, in which are seen thin perpendicular plates radiating towards a centre. Sometimes instead of pits and a radiating arrangement, the plates are set in rows in an involved and sinuated pattern. Now, during life, from amidst these plates rises up a gelatinous tissue bearing a mouth with protrusile lips, and an array of sensitive tentacles, all of which on alarm are contracted so as to disappear completely in the stony recesses, leaving nothing apparent but the white and apparently naked plates. Really, however, they are not naked, but are still invested with a film of gelatinous flesh, so tightly stretched as to be reduced to an invisible tenuity.

In these massive or arborescent Corals, each single pit must be considered as the habitation of a single animal, and

the whole body bears the same relation to the little simple Madrepores of the European seas, as the compound Laomedea with its numerous branches and cells bears to the solitary Hydra. The elegant Coral that studs the rocks of Devonshire and Cornwall (Caryophyllia Smithii) is an instructive example of the simple species. It consists of a stony cylinder or inverted cone, the summit of which, hollowed into a shallow cup, is formed by the edges of thin plates that radiate towards the centre. While in its native element, a pellucid gelatinous flesh emerges from between the plates, sometimes rising to the height of an inch above their level; exquisitely formed and coloured tentacles fringe the sides of the cup-shaped cavity, across which stretches the oral disk marked with a star of some rich and brilliant colour surrounding the central mouth,—a slit with white crenated lips, like the orifice of one of those elegant cowryshells that we put upon our mantel-pieces.

In this condition the affinity between a Madrepore and an Actinia is seen to be very close. Indeed, if we imagine calcareous particles to be deposited on the surfaces of the radiating membranous partitions of the latter, we should have the stony plates, and the Actinia would be in every essential point turned into a Coral. The habits and economy of the two forms coincide exactly, except that the Madrepore is permanently attached to the rock by the adhesion of its stony skeleton, while the attachment of the Actinia, as we have already observed, is voluntary.

What a storehouse of life is the vast Ocean! what a prodigious Alma Mater ! What varied forms of being are borne in her prolific womb, and nourished on her expansive bosom ! "This great and wide sea! wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts." (Ps. civ. 25.) P. H. G.